


Before the Storm

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Good guys kiss in front of explosions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It happens too fast for any of them to make sense of it. Avengers Tower is coming apart; the Avengers themselves are scattered; revenge, apparently, is a dish best served fast and with a certain finality in the aftertaste.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this fanart on Tumblr: http://erebusodora.tumblr.com/post/35573940229/okay-once-again-you-made-me-do-it-and-well-i
> 
> Believe me when I say that nothing I can write will ever match up to the beauty of that art.

It happens too fast for any of them to make sense of it. Avengers Tower is coming apart; the Avengers themselves are scattered; revenge, apparently, is a dish best served fast and with a certain finality in the aftertaste.

Tony tries to take inventory, still reeling from the shockwaves. He’s still wearing his gauntlets from working on them long into the night, but the rest of his armour is somewhere amidst the rapidly growing pile of rubble. He knows Natasha’s away on a mission; Thor, Thor’s still in Asgard, Loki must have sneaked out again, the little shit; Bruce is up in Canada, something about Betty and overdue reunions; he thinks he heard Cap’s shield rebounding off something in the distance, through the smoke.

“Stark!”

And Barton makes six.

Not that he looks like an Avenger right now, Tony thinks idly – it’s not as harsh as it sounds, neither of them do, but at least Tony’s chest is on fire and he has some percentage of his suit at the ready. Clint’s still in his sleep-shirt, answering the great question of whether he sleeps with that bow of his (not that Tony didn’t already know the answer), and Tony’s distracted for a moment by the flash of the firelight off the dog-tags around his neck. Funny how you can forget somebody’s a soldier when they’re a superhero.

“Loki,” is all Tony can say in answer, because that one name covers a multitude of sins. 

Clint stares at the wreckage around them, then cranes his head back to stare incredulously up into the sky. “Is he _shredding_ the tower?”

“Looks like it.” Think, Stark, he tells himself. The gauntlets. They still work, independently of the suit. 

Clint’s judgement is “Petty much?” and despite it all Tony can’t help but grin.

A grin that fades as the ground shifts, shakes, and a glance around tells him what he needs to know even without JARVIS’ voice in his ear. Still, Clint’s doesn’t exactly go amiss.

“Scratch that. He’s shredding _Manhattan_?”

“Why settle for less? Maybe half the world will even think he’s a hero.” The quip falls flat, dull and hollow. Tony chooses to focus instead on his gauntlets, checking the lights, the wires left after the shock of the initial blast and the wave of force shattered the top of the metal, ripped everything from the mid-forearm to his elbow. Those jagged edges look dangerous. Good.

“I think I saw some of ‘Tasha’s knives back there,” he hears Clint say, and it takes Tony a moment to figure out what he’s talking about. Explosions never stop slowing him down. It’s…vexing. He needs to look into it.

But first.

“No.”

“Not a question, Stark.”

“You’re not fighting a Norse god in that.”

Clint pauses long enough in scanning the wreckage for weapons to roll his eyes. “Stark, you are not lecturing me on appropriate attire. I’ve seen YouTube.” He shrugs, rolling his shoulders, the superhero finding his way out of the man. “I might not have Kevlar, but apart from that, not much worse than my suit.”

“Another reason why you need to let me make you something that actually works as armour. I appreciate the ass, but distraction only goes so far.”

“Stark,” Clint says sharply, slipping into field agent mode, “not now.”

Right. Not now.

Because right now he definitely heard something hit the side of a building, somewhere close by, and he’s not enough of an optimist to think that it was Loki.

The Avengers have been a terrible influence on him. Tony has no idea when the hell he grew conscience, but he wishes for nothing more than to have the fucker removed right now. Because his hands are encased in something that can be a weapon even when you don’t have the sort of mind that picks apart intergalactic bombs in seconds – he knows, he’s checked – and he can’t ignore the fact that that means, in superhero terms, that he has to go fight the bad guy.

Except when he turns to go, Clint grabs his arm, in the sort of grip that suggests if Tony tries to pull away, he might break it. 

“Okay, seriously? Saving the world in your pyjamas, that’s fine, but technological marvels strapped to your arms, not so great? What exactly are your priorities?”

“Not getting civilians killed, most of them time,” Clint tells him, and Tony can’t help but bristle. “No armour means no Iron Man.”

“I have armour,” Tony reminds him, waving a gauntlet helpfully in his face. “See? Armour. Glowy hurty armour. Do I really need to spell this out for you?” He sees Clint hesitate, soldierly responsibility battling with the basic empathy that means Clint doesn’t like being the one to enforce orders, knows what it means to Tony not to sit this one out.

“I am actually trying to help,” Tony says softly. “Can we just focus on what you people have done to me?”

Clint’s face tightens unpleasantly, like he’s just remembered something he’d have rather left forgotten. Tony’s familiar with the expression.

Then that steel grip shifts, Tony feels a hand close around the back of his neck, and he’s wrenched forward until their lips meet.

It’s short, and sweet, and bitter, and tastes a little bit too much of smoke to be perfect. Nevertheless, Tony lets his eyes close and sinks inside it. It’s not just because he doesn’t want to see the fires and smoke spreading; he wants to centre himself, and yeah, he’s a horny bastard and pre-battle kisses never go amiss. It hardly hurts that he can feel his heart racing with adrenaline as Clint’s hand tightens and his nails accidentally scrape against skin. 

Reaching out, it’s purely instinctive to find the small of Clint’s back and pull him in closer. Possibly when you’re about to go fight a Norse god on pitiful amounts of sleep (overrated) and with limited resources at best (never stopped him before), you’re supposed to forego tongue, but if Tony is getting turned into a frog or a snowflake, then he is getting all the compensation he can now.

Clint pulls away with a bite to the lips, knowing full well the groan that will always provoke. Bastard. Tony reluctantly lets his eyes flutter open, and for a moment all he can see are the lights reflecting off Clint’s tags: red and orange for the fires, overpowered by a bright blue from the arc reactor. If you squint, blur your vision, it almost looks like Clint has his own reactor – his own shard of light stuck deep in his heart.

The very idea snaps Tony back into the moment, where he should be and where he never should have left.

“I’ll get the knives,” Clint tells him, grinning the all-too-familiar crazed grin of Hawkeye sensing a suicidal hunting season. “Save something for me.”

And he’s away, vanishing into the smoke like a fucking ninja.

Tony allows himself one brief reflection on how he very much wants to blow off the battle and go have awesome sex.

He always knew responsibility was going to suck.

He adjusts the gauntlets – no testing, Cap’s getting to him, judging by the voice in his head that tells him he doesn’t want Loki hearing the whine before the element of surprise is well and truly blown – and heads towards the sound of the fighting, clambering over his tower, ignoring the shirt sticking to his sweat already, and

above all else

ignoring the blood trickling down his arm.


End file.
